#fwxb2002

XB2002 Assignment Three - Environment Art

The Environment Art Scene Fly Through and Trailer:

For my final development milestone of my low poly environment, I created a flythrough/reveal trailer for the whole environment scene itself.

For the trailer, my main focus was to capture the majority of the environment within the Unreal project and have a seamlessly smooth transition throughout the whole thing for the camera’s projectile path it takes.

For the camera and video itself, the video was captured on a matinee keyframe animated camera, and upon completion of the matinee’s route rendered out the Matinee’s movie projected path at a 1080p 60 frames per second video at the MP4 format.

From here it was the case of taking the Unreal matinee movie and importing it into Adobe Premiere Pro and adding visual effects such as the transition to white in the title and credits scene and adding the soundtrack Floating Home over the video.

Within Adobe Premiere Pro I also compressed and rendered the video from its initially slow speed Unreal video file, and from here was able to acquire the smooth flow of movement visible in the video above.

I am very satisfied with the final version of the reveal trailer for the whole low poly environment scene, as it has allowed me to develop my 3D modelling, environment art, and Unreal materials skillsets.

One of the design challenges I faced within the video creation process of the project was creating the right visual effects for the video to make it more professional, as my creative milestone aim for this video was to create a fly through that resembles that of an actual game reveal trailer.

Before focusing on the visual aspect of my modular assets, I first decided to construct said assets with the focus solely on the dimensions, in order to help me determine appropriate scalability for the player's confines within my game level.

The assets I created for the level thus far are individual wall variants that fit together to create varying corridors, the 2 main types being a corridor with a corner and a straight corridor, other variants whilst similar, have doorways located at different positions, allowing me to construct a maze-like level with unlimited possibilities.

The initial modular assets I created ready for my game to be tested at university. were created according to the following plan.

Below you can see the modular assets laid out to the extent necessary for playtesting. With the addition of a doorway modular piece and a smaller blank wall, the confines of the gameplay were relatively simple to layout within UE4.

Feedback from the playtesting of my game was very useful, particularly the feedback from my tutor concerning my art direction. Everyone who tested my game was happy with the gameplay and seemed entertained throughout their experience, being confident with my progress regarding the gameplay itself, I am encouraged to focus on the 3D art aspect. 

I have decided I will be recreating my modular assets with a realistic Georgian theme, whilst keeping the length and width of the hallways similar, the ceilings will be higher and dependant on how quickly I progress I would also like to model Georgian props consisting of assets such as chairs, light fittings and framed paintings, all of which will be inspired by my reference imagery in my blog post entitled, “XB2002 - Modular Modelling - Blog Post 1 - Reference Images“.

I have also managed to locate an extremely useful reference in the form of a virtual tour of a modern Georgian style home.

The virtual tour can be found at the following link.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/iview3d-15bc8.appspot.com/o/Bedford%20Estates%20-%20The%20Reynolds.html?alt=media&token=88993523-9a97-48de-b1b8-33e5467adf6e

I have decided that I will be basing the style of my modular assets on the following image, as I believe I can achieve a nice aesthetic for my modular assets whilst not overly complicating the process of translating such an aesthetic into a 3D space.

The modular pieces below are each 400cm in width and 300 cm in height, both are currently untextured. Both pieces are all that is necessary to restructure the confines of my game in entirety, a far more minimalistic approach than my first attempt.

As you can see below, I have laid out all modular pieces within UE4.

I didn’t actually do any work on models today, though we were introduced to the terrain building function in Unreal, along with how to import heightmaps and such. Instead I had to reorganise my file and folder structure, as everything had gotten far too messy, with the latest version of some files scattered between my Futureworks drive and three USB sticks.

A quick tutorial from Paul on how to make modular models in Maya today. He absolutely blitzed through it as per. I really need to get to work on this assignment... instead, I spent another session on the Batwing, because let’s face it, if I’m gonna fail, I may as well do it spectacularly.

I connected the cockpit to the main body, adding in more edge loops where needed...

...which was a common theme. Edge loops. Verts straightened. Add more edge loops. Straighten verts...

The biggest pain at the moment is giving the missile barrels a rim, as it looks like the face of a certain character from Preacher if I smooth it without. It’s far from perfect, but it’s getting to the point now where it doesn’t matter.

Next time I return to this I’m just going to rush through the entire thing. Quality doesn’t even matter anymore. I just need to get it done, then when I have something to work with, ask if I can fix it in ZBrush. If I can’t, I’ll just get to quad drawing over it. I really can’t be bothered at this point.

Due to the dandruff-like snow and our country’s inability to cope with it all lessons were cancelled today. Thankfully though the majority of tutors were still in and available, including Paul, Ewan, and Dave from the previous year. As expected, I was the only one to show up. Understandable really considering most live in farmlands and equally uninhabitable areas (seriously, move to a real place people!)

Joking aside, I had a slightly productive session. Choosing to dedicate one last four hour slot to the 1989 Batwing, my focus was on some of the details in the mesh, mainly through the use of booleans. The front cannons, front exhaust, and missile launcher were the areas I implemented, and it’s now becoming clearer and clearer that I simply won’t get this finished in time. It’s far too complex a mesh, and let’s face it, I’m not a great modeller. Even if this turns out to be a masterpiece, I’m at the very least a slow modeller, which is still essentially a bad one as far as industry standards are concerned.

I’ve messed up massively with the front cannons. As the “ears” weren’t modelled properly, the housing chamber now looks like the imprint a broken pen would make in a pile of glue. Inserting new edge loops to accommodate the cylinder has proven to be a pain, as it has with almost every new addition to the mesh. Obviously I should’ve looked for the reference toy much earlier, as many elements are much easier to figure out now. Too little, too late though at this point.

The exhaust ports are actually coming along quite well considering. It doesn’t look like much right now but I’ve made a bit of headway with it, which is encouraging. Issues have arisen though again due to the new edge loops. Additionally, many parts of the mesh now have to be resculpted around this due to the changes it’s made in the main body.

Finally, we have the missile launchers. Not nearly as complicated as the others, it’s been just as tedious. Once the edge loops are complete I’ll also need to add in a lip, as with the others, so as to preserve the integrity of the mesh when it comes to smoothing.

Paul actually came in at a couple of points to see how I was getting on, and provide me with feedback for Batwing Forever. The topology was praised for the cleanliness and efficiency, and the the use of emissive channels was also praised. However, the flat colour issue reared its head again. Suggestions for improvement include adding wear and tear, and a few more panel details. As it’s practically finished, I suppose I could experiment with stamping on a few height maps here and there to see how it comes out. Obviously this will take it further away from the clean, sleek look of the source material, however it’s not about authenticity, it’s about getting a good mark!

Additionally, he had a look over the 1989 Batwing I was working on. He gave me a few tips and a couple of new tools to utilise. A combination of selection constraints and the scale tool can smooth out the creases that have been an issue since the start, and “append to polygon” should make cleaning up the bottom of the mesh slightly easier. In theory.

Next time I’ll need to work on the front lights a little bit again, as I’ve messed it up without realising, but it may have needed an extra edge loop or two anyway to maintain the rigidness of the area when it comes to smoothing it.